Short-staffed NYPD will freeze hiring of new cops as part of ‘painful’ budget cuts to fund migrant crisis: Sources

New York City will place a hiring freeze on new police department recruits as part of the city’s “painful” budget cuts, sources told the New York Post Wednesday.

Democratic Mayor Eric Adams is expected to announce substantial budget cuts Thursday that will impact the already short-staffed New York Police Department, the sources stated.

The NYPD currently has approximately 33,500 officers after losing nearly 3,000 cops to retirement and resignation since 2019. Meanwhile, overall crime in the city remains high.

The mayor will scale back migrant spending by 20% and announce fewer sanitation department litter basket pickups, multiple sources told the Post.

A source who was briefed by NYC’s budget director, Jacques Jiha, told the news outlet, “Everything is being cut. Nothing is being held harmless.”

In September, Jiha instructed the police department, fire department, sanitation department, and corrections to formulate a plan to reduce overtime costs.

“The mayor will … issue a directive to implement an overtime reduction initiative for our city’s four uniformed agencies,” Jiha wrote in a memo. “These agencies must submit a plan to reduce year-to-year OT spending.”

Adams recently called the city’s looming budget cuts “just horrendous” and “painful.”

“It’s going to hurt our services a lot,” he noted.

The mayor’s drastic cuts aim to get a handle on the city’s exorbitant expenses to provide services to the influx of migrants. Adams stated that he believes migrant services will cost NYC $12 billion in the next few years. There are currently more than 65,000 migrants utilizing the city’s emergency shelter system.

The city’s agencies were given until November to slash their budgets by 5% and potentially up to 15% by spring. However, Jiha noted that the cuts would still “only cover two-thirds of our projected asylum costs.”

In addition to the NYPD academy class freeze, the cuts will impact the Department of Education, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and the Board of Correction.

“In all my time in government, this is probably one of the most painful exercises I’ve gone through,” Adams told reporters Tuesday.

“When we look at around police, what the numbers of our police officers are going to be, and how we’ve done so well with dropping crime in our city, when we look at the school safety agents, when we look at some of the other initiatives that we’re doing, it’s going to be extremely painful for New Yorkers,” he stated. “And that’s why we continue to say we need help.”

Adams and several other Democratic mayors are requesting the White House lift work authorization restrictions for migrants and provide $5 billion to cover the cities’ costs for migrant-related services.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!